


Can't turn from your broken path

by Salt_water



Category: Monument Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:14:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27475591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salt_water/pseuds/Salt_water
Summary: The lesser of two evils still has consequences.Ida.  Her name, perhaps? But it didn’t feel right.  Ida, she remembered-- merely a fragment, but enough-- was a bright, happy person in a beautiful world.  Someone with more than than a hatful of-- she didn’t know what, really-- and bleeding feet from walking for far too long.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Can't turn from your broken path

She didn’t know where she was, or where she was going. Or even where she came from. All she knew was that she went where her feet took her, and that she must guard… whatever was in her hat at any cost.

And a name. Ida. Her name, perhaps? But it didn’t feel right. Ida, she remembered-- merely a fragment, but enough-- was a bright, happy person in a beautiful world. Someone with more than than a hatful of-- she didn’t know what, really-- and bleeding feet from walking for far too long.

How long had she been walking, hardly seeing a soul?

(Oh, but many had seen her, this Lost Princess. Her regal bearing, fine though simple clothes, her eyes.

“What has she been through, to make her eyes so sad? So old?”

“Where does she come from? Does she even exist?” Whispers followed her. She did not hear. She had forgotten.

Life, happiness.

To see, to feel, to hear.

Herself.

The whispers never followed her long, for if you do not remember yourself, who else would?)

Her hat, her burden, grew heavier with each step-- the growing weight her only way to ensure time still moved. Minutes, hours, days, years, long lost. She had long stopped counting steps, but time still flowed. 

(Forward, backward, steadily, she did not know. Only that it hadn’t stopped. That was enough.)

She couldn’t even guess how far she had travelled. Her surroundings never changed-- or more accurately, changed too much. Constantly shifting, gray wasteland tangled all in on itself. Trapped in a perpetual knot...

(A fragment of memory tries to surface, of a small creature running in a wheel, never moving forward, but still content to run. Ida (Is that her name? It feels wrong. It is all she has.) Ida is not-- no longer-- content. But what else can she do?)

As time marches on, measured only by Ida’s steps, things change. Slowly, so slowly she does not notice until they already have. The tangled, nonsensical landscape shifts-- the once featureless plain now has ruins tangled in its knots.

(Familiar? She can’t tell. The crows she sees occasionally-- another change-- scream at her. It feels accusing, but she cannot say why, nor what they accuse her of.)

The lines of the landscape nor scream of a people long gone. The words on a wall mourn a people dying-- long dead now.

Something in her mind whispers: Lost. merely lost. They (are not, will not) have not died. Lost. Forgotten. _Your theft will prevent it._

(The dying, or the forgetting? The crows scream, but do not answer.)

Ida walks through the ruins now, and the tangled landscape grows higher around here-- she can nearly see how it changes as she walks, as the tangles retreat farther away, releasing her from their impossible knots.

(The ruins are tangled, too. But it is one that makes sense, can be made sense of. Familiar. Ida doesn’t question it.)

The knotted distance unravels as she descends, arranging into mountains as the ruins grow more frequent, more impressive, less ruined.

She can change her path though, and does.

What she has carried so long must now be returned, the monuments restored, the valley revived.

Ida enters Monument Valley, and the lost Princess begins to remember herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I always did wonder why Ida stole the geometry. This... doesn't really answer that question, but in the case of this writing, I imagine that something was gonna wipe the kingdom (queendom?) out completely and stealing the geometry was the only thing she could do to prevent utter annihilation, even though she'd basically sully her own name doing so.


End file.
